When a towing vehicle is backed toward the tongue of a trailer for placing the hitch ball of the vehicle in alignment with the trailer tongue, the operator of the towing vehicle usually cannot place the ball of the hitch in perfect alignment with the coupling of the trailer tongue. The operator might attempt to move the tongue of a light trailer a short distance to a position where it registers with the hitch ball; however the manual movement of even a light trailer might be dangerous since manual movement is difficult to control. Usually, the vehicle has to be repositioned.
There have been prior attempts to produce trailer hitches and trailer tongues that have the ability to move laterally for making connection between the trailer and the towing vehicle to solve misalignment of a hitch ball and the ball receptacle of a trailer tongue. But most of the prior art devices have resulted in complicated structures and, in some cases, the structures have been somewhat fragile and tend to bend or break when encountering unusual forces between the trailer hitch and the tongue of the trailer. In some prior art hitches the alignment of the trailer behind the towing vehicle is automatic when they move forwardly, and they lock together in the aligned positions. But the lock mechanisms generally are difficult to operate by the vehicle operator, are not very accessible to the vehicle operator, and when the trailer hitch becomes covered with dirt or becomes deteriorated with rust, etc., it may be even more difficult to operate and difficult to clean and restore to the more operative state.
In some instances, the trailer hitch of a towing vehicle might be installed so that the height of the hitch ball is too high or too low for the optimum height of attachment to the tongue of the trailer. Most of the known prior art trailer hitches do not have a convenient height adjustment feature for hitch balls, so that there is a tendency of towing the trailer with the trailer tongue sloped downwardly or upwardly, tending to form an unsafe connection to the towing vehicle.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a trailer hitch that is adjustable in height and that can move laterally for ease of connection to the tongue of a trailer, that becomes locked in alignment between the towing vehicle and the trailer when moving in the forward direction, and that is easy to clean and otherwise maintain.